Something Borrowed
by
Josh Timmermann

I've decided: Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation would probably be the great film it's been made out to be if it didn't remind me so strongly of other, better films. It seems to me that Coppola has seen and probably really liked In the Mood for Love, Rushmore, and Ghost World, and then figured, "Hey, why not combine the three?" As a big admirer of those films myself, I have to admit: it does seem like a pretty damn good idea.

Essentially, she takes Bill Murray's Rushmore character, twists him around a little (rather than a miserable, filthy rich tycoon, his character here is a miserable, filthy rich actor); supposes that Johansson's Ghost World character ended up going to college after all and then met the sort of guy that she might've found initially appealing enough to marry, perhaps just for normalcy's sake (i.e., the type of guy that Thora Birch's Enid would've no doubt labeled an "extroverted, pseudo-bohemian loser") but later quickly grows bored with; and tosses them together by chance into an ephemeral, romantic-but-not-(necessarily)-sexual affair, ala In the Mood for Love. To boot, as shot by cinematographer Lance Acord, Coppola's contemporary Tokyo setting is nearly as visually intoxicating as Christopher Doyle and Mark Li Ping-bin's gorgeous vision of 1960's Hong Kong in the Wong film.

The problem is that Lost in Translation simply isn't as good as those other films, nor does it ever quite manage to shake their shadow, thus minimizing the effect of even its finest moments. While Bill Murray's Bob Harris isn't as charmingly eccentric and, ironically, doesn't seem as hopelessly 'lost' as his Herman Bloom in Rushmore, both his character and performance here seem sort of borrowed and embellished from the earlier film, with evidently not much 'translation' on Coppola's part entering into the picture. Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte is to a 'T' Ghost World's Rebecca after having learned a little more about life and consequently having both lightened up some and grown a bit more cynical. Which isn't to say that either actor is bad here, by any means. They're both about as good as they were in their earlier roles, because they give roughly the same performance.

Don't get me wrong. There are some genuinely lovely moments here. But the ultimate heartbreaker, Bob and Charlotte's farewell, while undeniably quite poignant in its own right, suggests Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung's lachrymose final night together so clearly that it is glaringly obvious that Coppola's scene really doesn't hold a candle to Wong's in terms of profound emotional impact--nor, for that matter, is it as quietly affecting as Enid's visit to Seymour in the hospital or her conversation with Rebecca outside afterward. Coppola's dubious attempts at the sort of bitingly humorous misanthropy that Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes' Ghost World script employed so effectively are undoubtedly Lost in Translation's weakest element. Charlotte, at one point, says to Bob, "But I'm so mean," to which he replies, "Mean's okay." I agree -- but taking tactless, repetitive cheap shots at another culture, presumably just for the sake of lightening the mood enough to pacify audiences who have paid to see a Bill Murray comedy, is not. Even when I couldn't help but laugh due to Murray's always-impeccable comic timing, the laughs felt guilty and very tongue-in-cheek.

This sort of convenient cultural condescension also plays in weird, uncomplimentary contrast with the touching, sweetly realized relationship at the film's core. Coppola might've borrowed Murray's character from a Wes Anderson movie, but she completely lacks Anderson's wonderful ability to embrace all of his characters, despite their flaws and idiosyncracies; even Zwigoff and Clowes made a considerably better effort at doing so than Coppola makes here. Besides basically poking fun at those wacky Japanese, Coppola apparently has no use for Charlotte's Stroke-ish photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi), nor for a ditzy blonde actress acquaintance of his (Anna Faris) also staying at their hotel in Tokyo. It's almost as if she consciously painted the characters of Charlotte and Bob as vibrantly and with as much complexity as possible, and then ran out of paint, leaving the rest of the canvas relatively blank and the other characters to exist purely as further evidence of how terribly Deep and Interesting the two primaries are in comparison.

While I enjoyed Lost in Translation more than this review might seem to indicate, it ultimately left me with both a tear in my eye and a bad taste in my mouth.

©2003 Josh Timmermann
CineScene